Bardway was born in -284 EC and was trained as an artist. In -260 EC, she found herself appointed to the position of Court Portaitist in the Court of Odgar IV. Although she was a gifted lumicist, she began experimenting in alternative techniques to incorporate spectral luminescences into lumic works.

With a generous travel endowment from Odgar IV, the young Miss Bardway began traveling into the Jorvyll and the Sarfelogian Mountains in order to study supernatural and supranatural luminescences, and to attempt to gather supernatural and supranatural pigments. She was on her fifth expedition in -241 EC when she disappeared and was presumed dead. Although the exact nature of what happened to her remains unexplained, she presumably crossed a nexus of orthogonalities in such a way as to either slow the passage of time, or else she crossed into an orthogonality where time travels at a much slower rate than normal. In any case, she remained lost and presumed dead for 123 years. The entire Carsokian clan was both shocked and overjoyed when Wilhelmina reappeared in -118 EC.

Within a few years after her return, Wilhelmina Corinne Bardway resumed her examinations of supernatural and supranatural luminescence. She found that her Memories began to pervade tools that she used regularly. Whether this was due to her unusual experience across orthogonalities or whether it was related to the old, broken viola she had brought back from her travels or the fact that now two of her Dendel's Stripes were luminescent, the transferrence happened repeatedly. A pencil she used to write notes in her journal was discovered to be writing short stories on its own at night. A number of mirrors about the house that had reflected her image became untimed, and began reflecting images of the past. The dice in the family's uevgliiwm set became so attenuated to her that they would always fall exactly as she desired, and no one would play the game with her anymore.

The supranatural luminescence meter was developed after Wilhelmina Corinne Bardway discovered that a splinter of ghoulwood sitting on top of a mirror registered changes when the nearby level of supranatural luminescence increased. She quickly developed a mechanism that would take advantage of these particular properties and provide a reading. Supranatural luminescence meters are now calibrated to what is refered to as the Bardway scale.

Research by Doctor Mary Jane Shrigure in the -60s EC tried to use supranatural luminescence meters to determine altitude in cartography. Though mostly unsuccessful, as an inadvertent discovery from her research, she was able to begin to identify the course of the Shrigure Gradient based on her measurements. Rancticirchiretic was more successful in developing methods of locating strong points of orthogonality boundaries with the use of supranatural luminescence meters in the -40s EC. Still, to this day, the nature of supranatural luminescence is poorly understood, and the full potential of the ability to measure this phenomenon has yet to be realized.